Guest guest Posted October 29, 2002 Report Share Posted October 29, 2002 ***************************Advertisement*************************** eCentral - Your Entertainment Guide http://www.star-ecentral.com ***************************************************************** This message was forwarded to you by yitzeling. Comment from sender: This article is from thestar.com.my URL: http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2002/10/22/features/greenote2210\ & sec=features ________________________ Tuesday, October 22, 2002 Ivory poachers at it again POACHERS have begun slaughtering more endangered elephants in anticipation that some African countries will be allowed to restart the ivory trade. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) director Joe Kioko said 81 elephants had been killed illegally this year compared with only 57 last year as poachers stock up, hoping to slip their illegal booty into a legal market. KWS said it would oppose South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia next month when they seek a loosening of the total ban on international ivory trading. Kenya and India have both proposed tightening the ban to protect elephants from the trade in tusks, which was banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). KWS officials said they will argue that the 1990 ban on African ivory needs to continue until more effective monitoring systems are put in place to track elephant populations when signatories to the convention meet in Santiago, Chile on Nov 3. KWS deputy chairman Richard Leakey said if the ivory trade was allowed to resume it would be impossible to keep track of legal and illegal ivory, track poachers or even keep a reliable monitor on elephant populations at risk. China is the world & #8217;s largest importer of illegal ivory, most of it from Africa. Chinese authorities had seized three tonnes of Kenyan ivory last month from a consignment labelled as wood. KWS records indicated that over 16 tonnes of ivory had been seized this year, mostly in Asia. Ivory is still a prized commodity used in Asian sculpture, musical instruments and decorative objects. The biggest buyers of Chinese-worked ivory are ethnic Chinese from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia as well as Japanese. & #8211; Reuters <b>Cleaning up electrical waste</b> A NEW law to make companies meet the cost of recycling their own electronic goods from refrigerators to hairdryers will come into effect in the European Union in 2006. “The consumer will be able to return equipment at the end of its life free of charge and send it for environmentally sound treatment, re-use and recycling,” said Margot Wallstrom, European Commissioner for the environment. He said making firms pay for recycling at the end of a product & #8217;s life would be an important incentive to producers to take environmental concerns into account when designing goods. The bill will require a financial guarantee to be added to the price of items to make sure funds are available for recycling. Each member state has the right to decide exactly how the law will be put into effect. The Commissioner said the new system is expected to lead to price rises in goods of between 1% and 3%, depending on the size of the article. Firms will have to fund centres to process the waste. The new law will mean that each EU state must make sure electronic goods are not thrown out with normal rubbish and sent off to landfills, but be collected and processed separately. & #8211; Reuters <b>Iceland to hunt whales again</b> ICELAND has announced plans to resume whaling, a day after the International Whaling Commission decided to readmit the country as a full member. Fisheries Minister Arni Mathiesen assured, however, that whaling will not start before 2006 and then only for scientific purposes. Iceland walked out of the whaling commission 10 years ago in anger over the worldwide moratorium on whale hunting. Since then, it has made attempts to rejoin but has not been willing to recognise the moratorium. It succeeded only on Monday after the Swedish delegation changed their minds and voted to reaccept their Nordic neighbour. The vote was extremely tight. Of the commission & #8217;s 50 members, 19 voted in favour and 18 against. Norway, which has long-standing objections to the worldwide moratorium on whale hunting, and Japan, which hunts whales for scientific purposes, backed Iceland. Sweden subsequently announced that its representatives made an unfortunate mistake when they voted for Iceland & #8217;s membership in the IWC. Sweden & #8217;s Environment Ministry said the “Yes” vote & #8211; which tipped the international whaling organisation in favour of Iceland & #8211; was due to a bureaucratic hurdle and said the country still opposed whaling and would try to take back the decision. Mathiesen said whalers would not touch endangered whale species. “We will only whale in accordance with solid scientific information, and to ensure sustainable development in the oceans surrounding us,” he said. He said the whaling plans were meant to ensure a balanced exploitation of marine animal stocks as some whale stocks had increased and were already affecting weaker whale and fish stocks. “Whales either live on fish or on the same food as fish, and we need to research how that affects the fish stocks and control that it doesn & #8217;t destroy the balance between the species.” Iceland was allowed to hunt 60 whales a year for scientific purposes from 1986 until 1989, when all whaling was banned. In a separate move, the IWC also voted to allow indigenous people in Alaska to kill a limited number of bowhead whales for subsistence. They will be allowed to hunt 280 bowhead whales & #8211; at a maximum of 67 per calendar year & #8211; in the period between 2003 and 2006. & #8211; Reuters <b>New bite to shark fin campaign</b> AN Asian environmental group is using shock tactics to try to wean diners off shark fin soup, weeks after the release of another study which said the Chinese delicacy contained excessive levels of mercury. The Singapore-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society plans to put up posters in schools and public areas showing men in gas masks and chemical protection gear cooking in a kitchen before serving up bowls of shark fin soup to dinner guests. Postcards with the same image will be distributed free in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, San Francisco, and possibly even China, said group spokesman Grant Pereira. Each card will carry a warning: “Shark fins may contain high levels of mercury. Eat them at your own risk.” A recent study in Hong Kong found that people with high mercury levels in their blood had frequently consumed deep sea fish such as tuna and shark fin, local newspapers reported. The study also showed excessive levels of mercury can lead to male and female infertility. A study by environmental group WildAid in Thailand last year showed 70% of shark fins contained mercury levels in excess of World Health Organisation guidelines. The society ran another postcard campaign earlier this year which showed a bride and groom gazing lovingly into each other & #8217;s eyes as they entered a blood-splattered banquet hall littered with mutilated sharks. Pereira said the society received a good reception from its earlier campaign. “A lot of people called to encourage us and a few companies we know took sharks & #8217; fin off their dinner menus.” Environmentalists have long protested against the practice of “finning”, where fishermen hack off the fins of a shark and throw the rest of it overboard, leaving them to die. As many as 40 sharks can be killed to supply each wedding. & #8211; Reuters <b>Largest Aussie park</b> AUSTRALIA has set aside a massive chunk of outback desert as the nation & #8217;s largest protected area, turning the territory over to aborigines in a bid to protect the culture and environment from outside influence. The area covers over 98,000 sq km & #8211; more than twice the size of Switzerland & #8211; in Australia & #8217;s remote red centre, where European settlers have had little impact and aboriginal landowners live a traditional life. The recognition of the protected area, called Ngaanyatjarra, follows five years of lobbying from aborigines for funds to save the area from feral animals and non-native plants which have spread across Australia since Europeans settled in 1788. While the lands have always been managed by aborigines, the official status as a protected area will give the traditional owners money to help trap non-native animals such as foxes, fence off waterholes and develop eco-tourism ventures. The women of Ngaanyatjarra have already begun to nurture native vegetation for food & #8211; dubbed “bush tucker” in Australia & #8211; on a commercial basis to help fund further protection. The remoteness of the area has saved it from the ravages of grazing or pasturalism that has hit other areas of the country. It is the 15th indigenous protected area proclaimed in Australia, and the largest ever, incorporating sections of the Gibson, Great Sandy and Great Victoria deserts. Some 150 bird, 103 reptile, 47 mammal and 11 frog species are found throughout the region, while almost 650 plant species have been catalogued. At least five threatened species lived in the area. & #8211; Reuters <p> ________________________ Your one-stop information portal: The Star Online http://thestar.com.my http://biz.thestar.com.my http://classifieds.thestar.com.my http://cards.thestar.com.my http://search.thestar.com.my http://star-motoring.com http://star-space.com http://star-jobs.com http://star-ecentral.com http://star-techcentral.com 1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Star Publications is prohibited. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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